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MARY J. TABER 



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A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


A 

HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 



MARY Ji> TABER 

Author of "The Cathedrals of England," "Bells: An Anthology," 
Few Friends," "Bathsheba’s Letters," etc. 


PHILADELPHIA 

THE JOHN G. WINSTON COMPANY 

1914 


"Just A 


?Zi 

Tu^ 

He 


Copyright, 1914, by 
Maky J. Taber 



JUN -a 1914 


©CI.A3 <451G 


‘ V r. ly 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


I F Jack were not so adorably angelic I should think 
there was witchcraft or something else uncanny 
about this marriage of ours, for there has been a 
constant succession of untoward events since the 
evening he made me the offer of his heart and hand 
and I asked for time to consider. 

Why or for what reason I made this request it 
would puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer to decide. No 
human being knows the why or wherefore, I, least of 
any. For months I had been thinking of him day and 
night and hoping he would tell me he loved me and 
wanted me to be his wife, yet when he actually spoke 
the words I longed to hear I suddenly felt surprised, 
unprepared, frightened. 

Jack laughed, took out his watch and allowed me 
two minutes and a half for reflection. The rogue! 
I suspect he knew perfectly well that I had loved 
him for many a long year, ever since he wore kilts and 
sashes, or at any rate knickerbockers. 

Before the time limit expired my head sank on his 
shoulder in the spot made to cradle a woman’s head. 
I hid my face and began to sob, though, as I said 
before, no mortal knows why or wherefore, except 
that in every stress of emotion woman’s tears are 
always in order. Lachrymose she is and probably 
always will be. She weeps when she is sad, when she 
is mad, when she is glad. The emancipation of her 
sex has not freed her from the tyranny of those 
exasperating tear glands. Man stands dry-eyed and 
superior while she is obsessed by overflowing ducts. 
As my change of base was somewhat sudden and 
( 5 ) 


6 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


unexpected, I jostled Jack’s watch out of his hand. 
Availing itself of Newton’s Law of Gravitation, it 
fell clattering to the floor, carrying with it the ribbon 
and gold racing medal attached, which he calls his 
brass trunk check. Natmally the crystal was broken 
and the internal economy seriously damaged or, as 
Jack expresses it, “put out of commission.” 

Now that I had something tangible to cry about, 
I ceased wailing, sat up, took my handkerchief out of 
my sleeve, wiped my eyes and apologized for the 
mischief I had caused. 

Jack said, “It is not of the shghtest consequence. 
Let it stop; let it stop forever if it wants to. Don’t 
worry. Little One!” 

Why Little One, when I am two inches the taller 
and several pounds the heavier? A buxom lass is 
dad’s pronouncement, being well developed by athletic 
sports, a particularly healthy young woman and in 
my style and carriage essentially modern of the 
moderns. 

The caressing tone in which that “Little One” 
was spoken and the long kiss which followed banished 
my doubts forever. All was well with the world. 
Time for us stopped at the moment the watch stopped, 
which was really the proper thing for it to do. In 
fact we did not know there was any time until Popper 
called over the banisters, “Olivia, do you know what 
time it is?” 

That is his stereotyped interrogation whenever the 
college boys stay late. I fancied his accents were 
less stern than aforetime. Perhaps they were molhfied 
by Jack’s quarter of a million of dollars in possession 
and very much more in anticipation. 

I had not the remotest idea of the time of night. 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


7 


or day as it might well be, but I made haste to reply, 
“It is half-past eight by Mr. St. Albans’ watch.” 

Popper rejoined, “I imagine Mr. St. Albans’ 
watch is a ‘stop-watch.’ It is time little girls were 
abed and asleep an hour and a half ago.” 

Then we must bid each other our first good-bye. 
It was an affecting ceremony, almost as if it were a 
parting of seven years with no certainty of ever meet- 
ing again. Jack quoted his beloved Shakespeare: 


“Good-night, good-night; parting is such sweet sorrow 
That I shall say good-night till it be tomorrow.” 


“And by Jove, I have done it, for I hear the clock 
on the stairs striking twelve this very minute.” 

I exclaimed, “Goodness! Popper must have been 
asleep! He was never so dilatory before in testing 
my chronological knowledge.” 

The next day, or more correctly later in the same 
day. Jack interviewed Popper at the office and asked 
permission, all in due form, to marry the daughter of 
the house, as the eldest daughter is called in England. 
I have been credibly informed that Popper answered 
blandly, “I do not know that I have any objections.” 

Objections! I should say not. He was most 
tickled to death, and congratulated me on landing 
my big fish at last, which struck me as a pretty shabby 
speech for a parent to make, who had done all the 
angling himself, he and Mommer. 

She tried to shed a few perfunctory tears at part- 
ing with her first-born, her eldest hope, but having 
no Jack to lend her his shoulder to shed them on, 
she soon wiped her dry eyes and turned them on the 
practical side of the affair, for Mommer is nothing 


8 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


if not practical. She began planning my wedding 
without more ado, her first observation being, “You 
must and shall be married on your birthday.” 

Jack’s future father-in-law proved to be correct 
in saying the watch was a stop-watch. The hands 
still point to 8.30 and the owner protests, “I am 
satisfied with it as it is. I do not want it repaired 
because it is the time I reckon from. All previous 
is not B. C. or A. D. for me, just B. 0., which means 
‘Before Olivia.’ I have another watch good enough 
to tell sidereal time by. This watch does not measure 
time by the stars, but by heaven itself.” 

Brother Tom said, “Jack has got it bad; however, 
we may hope for a safe recovery after the fever has 
run its comse and the crisis is passed.” 

I spoke from an elevated plane, as a fiancee of 
acknowledged standing: “Tom, you ought not to 
talk so foolishly. It is not good form. Remember, 
you are no longer a schoolboy pure and simple. You 


“Neither the one nor the other,” shouted this 
A-1 olive branch, rolling off the sofa on the floor in a 
paroxysm of laughter. 

I realized that on this occasion I had not been 
the guide, philosopher and friend I always aim to be 
to the younger children. 

Mommer soon began my trousseau in good earnest 
by sending an alphabet of Old Enghsh letters three 
inches high with two dozen linen sheets to be em- 
broidered with C. When they were sent home we 
found the girl had not accurately distinguished between 
C and E, but had worked the letter E on the whole 
clamjamfry. I was distressed, but Mommer said, 
“I think you are wrong to say the sheets are ruined 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


9 


and you will sell them to Mrs. Ellmore at half price, 
for C and E are almost identical. If the little querk 
or querl, or whatever you may call it, is noticed at 
all it will be considered a flourish in the embroidery. 
The Old English letters are so queer you have to be 
introduced to them anyway; besides, every one will 
know it stands for Carisbrook and will take the C for 
granted.” 

Popper tried his hand at consolation: “It is very 
simple: call them ‘seconds’ as we do at the cotton 
mills, and deduct the loss from the operatives’ pay.” 

I cried out hotly, “I’d scorn to defraud the poor 
girl of her hard-earned money.” 

Not one whit disconcerted. Popper, who was in a 
teazing mood (he always teazes when he is pleased), 
went on to say, “Maybe your second venture’s name 
will begin with E, after you have divorced Jack, as 
of course you will, for I never knew you to be out of 
the fashion.” 

I exclaimed, “Divorce! Nonsense! How can you 
talk so? I tlnnk it is perfectly awful the way people 
are getting divorced. Statistics average one couple 
in every seven. I can assure you our marriage will 
not be ‘a suspended indeterminate sentence dependent 
on good behavior.’” 

I read somewhere something like this: “Oh Love! 
Whither away? And through the chill wintry air 
there sounded the sad refrain. Wither away!” No, 
no! There will be no withering away about our love. 
It is sacrosanct. 

What was the third mishap? Oh, that out-of-date 
behind-the-times dressmaker made up my most swagger 
gown with two whole widths of Lyons velvet in the 
skirt. Of course, it had to be all made over and cut 


10 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


down to the regulation spread of twelve inches, which 
is ample, for, as Jack asserts, no one could wish a lady 
to advance more than one foot at a time. 

There was a lot of the velvet wasted, but I gave 
the pieces to the Girls’ Industrial School to make bags 
for the Christmas sale. As No Woman can have a 
pocket. Every Woman must have a bag. This is not 
an aphoristic excerpt from the play of Every woman” 
though it sounds like it. Just to think of it, no pocket 
at all, while a man has at least sixteen, counting those 
in his overcoat. What a relief it must be to search 
through them all to find any old thing — a nickel, a 
string, a match, a pipe, a cigar, a glove, a handker- 
chief, a pistol, a knife, a door-key, a postage stamp, 
a love letter, a visiting card, a business card, a car 
ticket. Bless my heart, what a privilege! Small 
wonder that men are Superior Beings when they are 
born to such great advantages; and if they are self- 
made men they always carry a book in their pocket. 
Let us speak well of pockets till we die. 

“Lyddy Locket lost her pocket. 

Lyddy Fisher found it.” 


The next grand fiasco was great-aunt Minerva’s 
wedding gift, something I had not seen for perfect 
ages and had almost forgotten ever existed, quite a 
fossil from prehistoric seons, or at least antediluvian 
days. Noah’s grandmother may have brought one 
with her into the ark, packed in the elephant’s trunk, 
or maybe she had two, as everything went into the 
ark by twos and twos. 

“The animals went in two by two, 

The elephant and the kangaroo.” 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


11 


Come to think of it, the lady’s name is not on the 
passenger list. There is Mr. and Mrs. Shem and the 
rest of the immediate family, but no mention is made 
of a grandmother. I fear she was sacrificed in the 
cataclysm, drowned while perched on the topmost 
bough of the tallest tree, cut off in the prime of life 
at the early age of say 300 or 400 years. If Noah was 
scanted for room, as no doubt he was, he might have 
left out the Hon or the tiger couple to advantage and 
taken grandpa and grandma aboard for old acquaint- 
ance sake, though that arrangement would have been 
hard on Teddy. 

I hung that specimen of antiquity on my cheval 
glass and invited the girls in to see the curiosity. 
I will bet ten hundred thousand to one that nobody 
guessed it. What should it be but a flannel petti- 
coat, not by any manner of means belonging to the 
hobble variety. Four widths of yard-wide flannel, 
not gored one inch, all elaborately embroidered in 
white silk by auntie’s own fair if somewhat shriveled 
fingers. Mommer put it away, after remarking 
oracularly, “You will find a use for it later on.” I 
suppose she knows what she is talking about, but 
I don’t. This I know, we girls will never consent to 
retrograde to those antiquated fashions now happily 
fallen into desuetude. Obsolescent like the sub- 
junctive mood. As well be a Dutch peasant woman 
and pile on quilted petticoats four deep. I was 
always a good speller, but those words desuetude and 
obsolescent which have come down to us from Grover 
Cleveland might stagger a regius professor. 

Were there ever such perfect deformities as the 
vast steel tilting hoops, thirty springs strong, to distend 
the crinoline, or the disfiguring camel’s hump bustles 


12 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


and bloated, wired, leg-of-mutton sleeves my mother 
says her mother used to sport? Now we have perma- 
nently settled on a costume which is aesthetic, graceful, 
the acme of good taste, with unsurpassed facilities 
for revealing “the human form divine.’’ I am aware 
that it is unbecoming to stout women to be too fully 
revealed by a scarce costume, but why he stout while 
Susanna Cocroft stands by ready to teach you “how 
you can weigh exactly what you should weigh.” 

The doctors croak about half-clad girls finding 
early graves. Let them possess their souls in peace. 
Pride keeps us as warm as toast. We shall not die of 
union suits, nor long corsets, nor lack of warm under- 
wear; neither will exposed throats and bare arms in 
zero weather prove fatal. Even the doctors’ bugaboo 
of a high heel in the middle of a sole finds no place 
in the bills of mortality. These are facts for “Mr. 
Gradgrind.” 

Here am I postponing the worst of our catastrophes 
because I hate to think of Jack’s pet horse, who died 
a martyr to the cause of true love. One frosty day 
when Jack was in such a hurry to see me (being, as 
he said, famished for a kiss) that he did not stop to 
have his horse sharp-shod, the poor creature slipped 
on the ice, fell and broke his leg, thus making it 
necessary to shoot him. Bridget declared, “It is all 
along of their wicked Protestant ways, gettin’ married 
in Lent. Wliy can’t they wait till after Easter? 
What’s the good of being married on a person’s birth- 
day? But it’s him that’s the satisfied man wid all 
her whims.” 

No horse was ever more sincerely mourned than 
that gallant dapple gray. His master placed a marble 
slab over his grave with the inscription “Beautiful, 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


13 


faithful, beloved.” Tom composed an ode to his 
memory. To be sure, his handwriting rivals Horace 
Greeley’s, but that is nothing to the purpose. The 
poem was to consist of thirteen lines because the horse 
was so unlucky. First Tom wrote down the end 
rhymes, or as Mademoiselle Ang61ique de Marcel 
(I wonder did she invent the marcel wave?) would 
prefer that they should be called, les houts rimes. 
The projected poem progressed but slowly, the throes 
of composition soon coming to a full stop. I quoted 
“Poeta nascitur non fit” for my brother’s edification. 
He has not even a bowing acquaintance with Latin 
or Greek, so he retaliated by saying, “Don’t sling 
your old Greek Homer at me.” I have a very private 
belief that when a sophomore mistakes a common 
Latin proverb for one of the hexameters of the Iliad, 
his college expenses are money thrown away, which 
thing ought not to be, for Popper often tells us he 
works his son’s way through college. Tom finished 
his poem at last, and appreciated it so highly that he 
expressed a willingness to compose an epithalamium 
for our wedding breakfast, but we declined the honor 
and bound him over to keep the peace. A dithyramic 
glee by Thomas, sung by himself in B flat, would have 
eclipsed all our other woes. 

To cap the climax, when I began to remove my 
white satin gown and unwind the yards and yards of 
Valenciennes lace draped around me all in one piece 
to avoid cutting, I found that I had only twenty 
minutes for getting out of that entanglement, getting 
into my going-away suit, distributing the flowers in 
my bridal bouquet among the bridesmaids and living 
through the hailstorm of rice and old slippers. As if 
all that was not enough, I soon perceived that the 


14 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


skirt of my traveling dress had vanished. There 
lay the purple waist, jacket, dinky little hat, veil, 
gloves and breast-knot of pansies, but not a vestige 
of the tailor-made skirt was anywhere to be seen. 
The house forthwith resolved itself into a committee 
of the whole. Everyone searched high and searched 
low. The bridesmaids rushed to the attic store 
closets; the bridegroom overhauled his suit case; 
the guests tossed their wraps about until they became 
involved in inextricable confusion. Rouncewell, Jack's 
man, dubbed by Tom “The groom of the stole,” 
displayed his usual ineffective inefficiency by running 
up and down the stairs. The chambermaid peeped 
under the beds and behind the bureaus; the lady's 
maid opened drawers everywhere; the waitress peered 
under her a^ssortment of aprons behind the kitchen 
door; the laundress plunged into the set tubs up to 
her armpits; the cook examined the butler's pantry, 
the butlter was not in condition to examine anything; 
the chauffeur assumed his favorite position on the 
flat of his back under the car, to make sure that all 
was in order for the rapid transit which he foresaw 
would be needed to catch the 3.45 train; the police 
officer who was guarding the presents seemed to have 
a more lucid and logical mind than the rest of the 
world, for he it was who went straight to the boxes 
and baskets of left-over dehcacies from the breakfast, 
stored beneath the kitchen piazza for removal 


“Soon as the evening shades prevail 
And the moon takes up the wondrous tale.” 


Alas and alas! 'Twas all in vain.^ At the latest 
moment, Mommer said with her accustomed com- 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


15 


manding air, forgetting I was now a married woman, 
“Olivia, put on your brown suit at once. It is the 
only thing to do. It looks very nice and you can get 
a new ready-to-wear suit in New York.” 

Thus was I forced nolens volens to don a suit I 
had worn anytime the last two months. The costume 
did not match Jack’s socks nor his necktie, both of 
which had been most carefully selected with refer- 
ence to a symphony in color. Jack going around to 
the various tailors’ shops with a piece of my purple 
dress goods in his hand. Our apparel was an ignomini- 
ous combination. Brown and purple! Why, as the 
French say, the colors swore at each other, and we 
were to have been arrayed in purple and fine linen 
a perfect ecstasy ih that royal hue. We tried to find 
a ready-made purple suit in New York, but there 
was not a single one that was passably chic. It ended 
in Jack’s purchasing an outfit of ties and socks in 
brown, which always does injustice to his complexion. 
Altogether the loss of that skirt about spoiled our 
wedding journey. 

Great was the wonder excited by the disappear- 
ance of the bride’s skirt. It was as incomprehensible 
as a jig-saw puzzle. The day after the wedding four 
reporters interviewed Popper about it. The sly old 
fox gave it for a scoop to the paper which had the 
best notice of the wedding in Society Events. When 
Jack heard of it he exclaimed, “Hang the reporters! 
What nuisances they make of themselves! I should 
think Mr. Carisbrook might have sent them to the 
right-about. We shall be a laughing-stock at every 
one of my clubs. Goodness only knows how long 
it will take to live down that story. I daresay it 
will be legendary in the time of our great-great-grand- 
children.” 


16 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


I wanted Jack to say “Father Carisbrook, ” but he 
didn’t. I suppose it was not a propitious moment 
in which to prefer my request, but he needn’t mind 
about Popper and the reporters, for Miss Eleanor 
Murfreesboro was one of the guests and she will give 
more notoriety to the story than all the newspapers 
in the country put together could accomplish with 
star reporters, double columns and scare heads, for 
they are satisfied with one insertion, while she will 
have five hundred repetitions with ever new addi- 
tions and improvements. 

After awhile we settled it in our own minds that 
the skirt was abducted to spite us by a ninny who is 
dead in love with Jack or Jack’s money. 

Nearly a month had passed; we were at home 
again, “all three” including Fluffy, when one day 
sister Julia shouted: “Eureka! Olivia did it all her 
own self. She bundled up the skirt with the worn- 
out dresses she sent to the Rummage Sale. It is 
exactly like one of her absent-minded idiosyncrasies, 
which word in this case ought to have a t in it.” 

If I do not know my faults it is not because Julia 
fails to point them out. I protested that I was not 
an idiot and that it was all nonsense about the rummage 
sale. I yearned to slap her, but wild horses cannot 
stop Julia once she takes a notion into her head, and 
she persisted in telephoning to the salesroom. The 
clerk answered that such a skirt as she described was 
sent with Miss Carisbrook’s donation. They noticed 
that it was new, so held it to be reclaimed, but as 
there was no inquiry for it, it had been sold the day 
previous. They would advertise and offer a reward, 
which they did, and the skirt was recovered lying at 
a dressmaker’s, where it had been left to be shortened 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


17 


at the bottom and widened at the top to fit the present 
owner. Of course I would be taller and slimmer than 
she, for whoever saw a lithe, willowy purchaser at a 
second-hand sale? I wish Julia hadn’t meddled. 
I do not want the bothersome thing, for I could never 
wear it without reminding people of the absurd story. 
I tried to get Popper to make Julia wear it herself, 
but he says it is quite too much to expect him to be 
the head of The Great Bed Rock Foundation Corpora- 
tion and manage Julia too. I detest that aggravating 
smile of hers. It would not do her any harm to be 
slanged a bit. Professor Harris did try it on in the 
chemistry class, when he asked, “What is lighter than 
hydrogen?” but when he told the answer she took it 
as a compliment to her fairy-like, thistle-down motions 
and thanked him prettily. 

I cannot imagine how the skirt got to that sale, 
for it is highly improbable, not to say impossible, that 
I could have sent it without knowing it. Tom says, 
“Livy, own up like a brick, and I will tell you a fool 
thing Jack did the day before the wedding that beats 
you all hollow.” I should like to know what it was, 
but if Jack wanted me to know he would tell me 
himself, and I’ll not begin by allowing people to tell 
me tales about my husband; besides, I don’t see 
how I can confess as long as I believe I did not do it. 
More likely it was a trick of that prestidigitateur who 
was flabbergasting the town that week. It would 
not be half so wonderful as some of his other dextrous 
manipulations; for instance, the hocus-pocus with 
Mrs. Jones’ wedding-ring, the identity of which could 
be easily proved because it had this couplet engraved 
inside: 

“Two mutual hearts 
Death never parts.” 


18 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


I wonder if Jack’s heart and mine are mutual. It 
sounds frightfully funny. 

After a few incantations the ring vanished in 
mid-air before the dazed eyes of the audience. The 
conjurer assured the distressed Mrs. Jones that her 
ring would be found in the hat of a man sitting in the 
third seat from the aisle in the front row of the balcony. 
This man’s hat was on his head, he said it had not 
been off the whole evening — so said also the dis- 
gruntled people behind him, whose view of the stage 
was obstructed by his headgear. When he was 
finally persuaded to remove it, there on the top of his 
bald spot reposed a dear little white rabbit, sound 
asleep, with Mrs. Jones’ ring, motto and all, dangling 
from his lop ear. 

The Professor explained: he said he always liked 
to explain his little deceptions. The rabbit had 
pink-eye;” on being told that gold earrings were a 
cure for sore eyes, he consented to have his ear pierced. 
Subsequently he was put to sleep by “Suggestion” 
and deprived of weight by “Levitation.” 

I think the transfer of my sldrt from closet to 
bundle would have been a far easier legerdemain trick 
for the conjurer to perform. 

So many contretemps were constantly happening 
that I begged my husband as we traveled by field 
and flood to take out two accident policies. I had 
a presentiment that our train would be telescoped, 
or else wrecked by suffragettes, and presentiments 
are serious things; at least, mine are. 

Whenever Jack said lie was sure we should reach 
home all right, I knocked on wood, according to the 
established custom of the folks at home, some of 
them pretty sensible folks too. Jack called it a silly 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


19 


superstition, though he allowed it had a pretty origin 
among the nuns a long time ago, who used to touch 
the wooden crucifixes they wore around their necks, 
in an appeal to the gentle Christ for protection from 
any words of self-confidence they had uttered; but 
he considered knocking on the arm of a car seat or 
window frame would be of little or no avail. 

I regret the insurance money we threw away on 
those policies, for no matter how much money Jack 
has, I am like Popper and always like the feeling that 
I am paying for value received. It might have supplied 
me with a dozen pairs of semi-transparent silk stock- 
ings. Transparent silk stockings are expensive and 
wear out soon; still, I must wear them and wear 
them out. There is another out which the dictionary 
defines as “under observation.” This also applies 
to silk hosiery. * Now that we ladies cross our knees 
man fashion, our stockings are under observation most 
of the time, very visible to the naked eye. I wonder 
the pernickety judge who was so much shocked by a 
woman’s crossed knees in his courtroom did not fuss 
about the naked eye. He must be blood kin or at 
least a family connection of the Court Chamberlain 
who returned Queen Elizabeth’s gift of a pair of silk 
stocldngs to her sister queen, with the indignant 
protest: “The Queen of Spain has no legs.” 

Mommer says her maiden aunt Jane used to 
inquire if both her feet were flat on the floor, remark- 
ing, “There is a certain delicacy to be observed.” 
In those trammeled days girls were not permitted to 
cross even their ankles, though all unseen beneath 
their long and voluminous drapery. 

If anyone had foretold that a grand-niece of this 
fastidious lady would ride astride of a horse, in a 


20 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


pair of trousers and a divided skirt, I do not believe 
she could have survived “the deep damnation of my 
taking off.” Duncan’s taking off by Macbeth would 
have been a mere bagatelle in comparison, though 
the riding master declares “it is done with the grace 
and elegance of a coryphee,” whatever that may 
be. I meant to look it up in my classical dictionary 
but forgot it. 

I thank my stars I was not born in the Dark Ages 
before women were at least partially emancipated. 
Life could not have been worth living without ciga- 
rettes to smoke, cocktails to imbibe, Huyler’s choco- 
lates to devour, golf to play, motors to drive, bridge 
to kill time. Poor ancestresses! I suppose they 
thought they were enjoying themselves with a dozen 
children and one antique best gown, no moire about 
that antique. A new baby every year, a new frock 
every third year. There is a moving 'picture without 
going to the theater to see it. 

For all that I do not approve of being too eman- 
cipated, neither does my husband. We draw the line 
at freak dances. Mommer says she is glad we draw 
it somewhere. 

Besides the dances / draw the line at swearing. 
Tom says, “Listen to Olivia’s creed. In the first 
place, an oath is bad form. In the second place, 
it is wicked.” 

This is true enough, reversing the order in which 
it pleases Tom to place them. 

Apropos of swearing, I recall with a shudder the 
damp sheets, towels and napkins we encountered at 
almost every hotel we stopped at on our journey. 
(In one place the sheets were almost wringing wet 
and I fully expected to die of pneumonia.) Jack 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


21 


contracted the habit of not articulating all the final 
letters when he said, “Here is another damp towel.’’ 
I always reproved him and made him repeat the 
phrase properly, though he said it was a pity I had 
such a prejudice against a fine old Saxon mono- 
syllable. 

There was one occasion on which I allowed him 
to swear a blue streak without reprimand or making 
any effort towards his reclamation. I even went so 
far as to say, “I think so too,” but, of course, that 
was not swearing. It was at Old Point Comfort 
where we had no comfort old or new, and failed to 
see the point when Rouncewell brought the wrong 
suitcase from the car to the hotel. As our trunks 
were non-comeatable, being checked to the next 
stopping place, I did not know how Jack would 
manage when we discovered that the owner of the 
wrong suitcase was a lady, but he said he was always 
grateful for small mercies, and slept balmily that 
night in a low-necked, short-sleeved, much befrilled, 
belaced and beribboned creation, and hoped the 
other party found his pajamas a very present help 
in time of trouble. Jack’s suitcase was returned to 
the address on the label, but we had no clue to the 
lady’s beauteous belongings, so they went the way 
of the purple skirt. There was a ring at the telephone 
and the inquiry if this time we really meant it, and 
we said we did. 

As another instance of the resemblance between 
the abnormal perturbations of our honeymoon and 
the parallactic librations of the real bona fide moon 
I will mention that on the arrival of the lost suitcase 
at the paternal mansion the entire family fell into 
hysterics, imagining there had been a terrible rail- 
road wreck — nothing saved but the baggage. 


22 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


I look after the parrot’s morals as well as Jack’s. 
Every time that precious bird raps out an oath I douse 
her in a basin of cold water, though I cannot see that 
this heroic treatment has the slightest reformatory 
effect. Tom has a choice bit bearing on the subject. 
I tell him it sounds to me like an old newspaper story; 
however, he vouches for its authenticity. One day 
some small chickens were set down before the kitchen 
fire to dry after being drenched in a shower. Pretty 
Polly was hanging head downward in her swing 
shrieking with laughter, but rose to the top of her 
perch, scratched her ear with her claw and after 
critically examining the chickens, put her head on one 
side, cocked her eye in that droll way she has and 
remarked thoughtfully, “Little danrned things! Been 
swearing, I suppose.” 

Speaking of towels, I found a towel in one of my 
trunks after we came home, marked “Waldorf-Astoria.” 
That was a mystery too great for me to solve alone, 
so after having put an unusual strain on the gray 
matter of my brain I asked Jack how he supposed it 
got there. He replied, “The same way your dress 
skirt got to the sale. Better mark it ‘A case of con- 
science,’ put it in the parcel-post and send it back 
before they advertise a reward, probably adding that 
the person who took it is well known and will save 
herself trouble by returning it.” Yet I had believed 
that my husband had full faith in my theory about 
the conjurer. How little do we know of the secret 
thoughts of our nearest and dearest! 

That same day I made another painful discovery. 
I found that our announcement cards were sent out 
with honour spelled without the u, like this: “Mr. and 
Mrs. George Carisbrook have the honor to announce,” 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


23 


etc. We shall surely be classed among les nouveaux 
riches if we do things in such bourgeois style. I should 
hardly have expected the cards would have been 
engraved in that way, even if Popper did use the 
reformed spelling in his order, for they pride them- 
selves in those establishments on keeping abreast 
with the times. 

I have had my new cards engraved in two styles, 
“Mrs. John St. Albans” for ordinary use, and “Mrs. 
Olivia Carisbrook-St. Albans” for use among my 
Women’s Rights constituency. My spouse respect- 
fully admired the hyphenated surname, advised that 
I should have “Votes for Wimmin” added in the 
lower left-hand corner of the card, and a black edge 
(not too inconsolably deep) to denote still more plainly 
than by the absence of his name that they are the 
cards of the Widow St. Albans. I a relict. Picture 
it ! He is a great teaze and has a way of talking about 
any new ideas of mine which causes them to collapse 
like a pin-punctured toy balloon, leaving me all flat- 
tened out. I do not believe I shall use those cards 
after all, as my husband objects to them. Besides, 
I have just been invited by Mrs. Berney MacBerney 
to join the Anti-Suffrage League. I see by their 
circular they have some of the best society names 
in town among their officers and members. Mommer 
advises caution, “No decided step yet.” 

In regard to my new name, I should like to pro- 
nounce it “Stalbans” as they do in England, but 
Jack’s father has set his face against it like flint. He 
called me to him and said, “Look here, my pretty 
poppet. Don’t you think it is enough for my son to 
change your name without your trying to change 
mine? Hands off my honorable name, or I shall call 


24 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


you an Anglomaniac, and that is good and sufficient 
ground for divorce, proving that you are Exhibit A 
in the front rank of the fourth class of divorcees. Kiss 
me and don’t turn out a pestiferous plague on my 
hands.” It is easy to see where this son of his father 
gets his tongue of guile that carries all before him. 

“Let us return to our muttons,” or I suppose it 
would be more correct, at least less rude and crude, 
to restore this slang to its original classic French and 
say, “Revenons d nos moutons” It seems to be need- 
ful for me to supervise other things besides announce- 
ment cards. I must look over the description of our 
trip to Washington Jack is writing for the Times, 
to see that he does not put in any swear words or 
any jokes to hurt the feelings of the Christian Scientists 
or the Pope of Rome. I imagine his account will be 
all couleur de rose. I could give my impression of 
the inauguration in short order. It would be just 
this: We stopped over the week-end and until Tuesday 
night to witness President Wilson’s inauguration. 
It was a most depressing function — no reception, no 
ball. I was bored to tears. The President of the 
United States is bound to be ex-offido a society leader, 
like President Arthur or dear King Edward of England. 
It ought to be put in the oath of office. This gentle- 
man behaves as though he never heard of Society with 
a capital S. Miss Katrina Van Benthusen, who is a 
descendant of one of the old patroons of Albany whose 
“father killed a bear,” told me she feared the country 
will lose prestige this four years. Teddy could see 
him and go one better. 

This is all I would say for publication. In a whisper 
to myself I would add I should not object to the title 
of “First Lady in the Land,” but I shall never get it. 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


25 


for Jack raves about “the corruption of American 
politics and the futility of reform.” He declines to 
be mixed up in them in any way. I believe he does 
vote for President if the quadrennial first Tuesday 
in November chances to fall on a pleasant day, so 
that his silk hat may not be spoiled by the rain; at 
least, he did vote last time, which was the only elec- 
tion since he came of age. He asked me if I was a 
suffragist and I replied, “The only vote I covet is 
yours.” He remarked, “That sounds very pretty, 
but it is susceptible of two interpretations.” Not so. 
I have no ambitions left, political or otherwise. I 
have ceased crying for the moon. I used to dream 
of living in “dear oh Lonnon,” of dukes and duchesses, 
strawberry leaves and the right of being kissed by the 
queen from the steps of the throne whenever I appeared 
at court, but that is all swallowed up in Jack. Only 
my husband and a decent position in society is all I 
crave now. 

We always bought a souvenir at every place we 
visited. In Washington at a dog fancier’s we fell in 
love with a bewitching little skye terrier, bought him, 
named him “Fluffy” on the spot and gave the leash 
to Rouncewell, telling him to lead the dog to the 
hotel. We took a car and arrived first. While I 
stood at the parlor window watching for them I saw 
Rouncewell approach swinging a chain with an empty 
collar at the end of it. What had become of my 
darling little pet? I could stand no longer. I felt 
I must sit down. Someone has written, “Suppose 
we were horses and could never sit down; but they 
have four legs to stand on, that may make it easier.” 
If I had as many as a centipede or grandmother’s 
thousand-legged table I should have collapsed all 


26 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


the same. We believed that Rouncewell had let the 
dog escape purposely to avoid taking care of him. 
I wanted to change his name to Trouncewell, and 
put the new name in force instanter, but Jack has a 
superstition that he is the only onliest man on this 
orb of land and sea, astronomically named the planet 
Earth, who can shave without rasping and cutting, 
so to avoid a collision with the wretch, who ought to 
be clapped in irons and kept on bread and water, I 
was hurried off to the dog-store to buy another terrier. 
The first thing we saw there was Fluffy with his eyes 
burning out like black stars from the cloud of long 
silky hair falling over them — for that rascally servant 
had taken him back and told the proprietor that the 
missus had changed her mind and wanted her money 
again, so he pocketed the twenty dollars and left the 
dog. Jack’s brow grew as black and his jaw set as 
square as his father’s. He left me with the dog, saying 
he would go and fetch the leash. Very soon he returned 
bringing also the money he had compelled the rascal 
to disgorge. On our walk to the hotel he said very 
quietly, but the quietness was a weather-breeder, 
“I have discharged my duty by discharging the thief. 
We will not be bothered with a valet any longer. 
I think I am equal to purchasing the car tickets, 
checking the ‘bloomin’ luggage,’ tugging at the trunk 
straps, brushing my coat and dropping letters in the 
street boxes. Keeping the dog ‘surgically clean’ 
will give scope to my genius. I can surely care for a 
puppy if I can do the bigger stunt of buttoning your 
gowns up the back. It was an undertaking at first, 
wasn’t it? You may bet I repented not having urged 
you to bring your maid, but since I have mastered 
that neglected branch of my education I feel a before 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


27 


undreamed of confidence in my ability to do and dare 
all things. Amassing a colossal fortune like the 
governor’s sinks into insignificance. I might some- 
time or other shave myself if I had a Gillette safety 
razor. There is where I am going to miss Rounce- 
well. I shall never find another such a barber. He 
would not steal more than ten dollars a week and I 
would gladly pay as much as that for his smooth 
shave every day, but the principle of the thing had to 
be considered. I knew he smoked my cigars and 
helped himself liberally to toilet articles with occa- 
sional handkerchiefs, collars and cuffs, but this trans- 
action is the end of the limit. I could not overlook 
such a bare-faced swindle. Of course, he never calcu- 
lated on our going back to the store, finding the dog 
and hearing the true story; he was confident his tale 
of the dog slipping his collar would pass muster.” 

The hotel clerk condescended from his high station 
and conscious superiority so far as to take a mitigated 
lukewarm interest in the affair and added a descrip- 
tive phase to the register. After “Mr. and Mrs. 
John St. Albans and valet,” he wrote, “a helva feller.” 

After a day or two Rouncewell had the impudence 
to apply for a character. Jack sent him this recom- 
mendation : 


“Dear Sir: Rouncewell is the best barber you or any other 
man were ever shaved by. 


“John St. Albans.” 


I should like to have seen his face when he read 
this back-action compliment and have known if he 
will ever use it. 

I will say one thing for Rouncewell, he was careful 
about the foreign labels on my trunks. There they 
all are, not one scraped off: 


28 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


Shepheard’s Hotel, Cairo. Luxor Hotel, Luxor. 

Grand Hotel Michel, Rome. Hotel Russell, London, 

Parker’s Hotel, Naples. Hotel Luna, Venice. 

Hotel Savoy, Paris. Warwick Arms, Warwick, 

etc., etc., etc. 

Fluffy proved to be an entirely exemplary dog and 
gave us very little trouble. He was, and is, a never- 
ending source of pleasure. He learns a new trick 
nearly every day and the way he loves us is a caution 
to dog-haters, also the way we love him. How much 
more lovable some dogs are than some humans, and 
how much they know which is a sealed book to us, 
as unknown as the life of William Shakespeare or the 
whereabouts of the Sangreal. I must write a brochure 
some day about Fluffy; he is as worthy of being 
inunortalized as the beloved dogs of all time. He will 
compare favorably with the tailless dog of Alcibiades, 
with Sir Walter Scott’s Maida, with Rab and his 
Friends, with the Dog of Montargis, with the brave 
and loyal martyred Gelert, with the Mount St. Bernard 
dog who saved forty lives, and with hundreds more 
I could mention. 

I hear Jack’s voice downstairs describing “Livy’s 
Mouse Campaign.” 

“I depose and say that one night Olivia woke me 
to convince me that this time there really was a mouse 
in the room, as anyone not stone deaf could hear by 
the rustling of the paper where it was nibbling the 
crumbs in our picnic box on the table. I actually 
heard something that sounded rather mouse-like. 
Taking my life in my hand, I braved the dangers 
of investigation while Livy covering up her head in 
the bedclothes, braved the dangers of suffocation. 
It turned out to be, not the supposedly carnivorous 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


29 


quadruped held in awe by one-half of our population, 
but the comparatively harmless object the loose 
leaves of the Saturday Night Boston Evening Transcript 
fanned gently about the floor by the changing current 
of air from the open windows, albeit that most reputa- 
ble paper is not to be whiffled about by every change 
of wind. 

“Oh, the mice we did not meet in those hotels are 
past counting; to enumerate them by units, tens, 
hundreds, thousands would be a heavy strain. I 
asked Olivia if she was going to keep up the excite- 
ment all through our wedded bliss, she said, ‘Not so, 
my lord; I always have at least two mouse-traps 
baited with toasted cheese in every room in the house, 
not counting cats.’ I sniffed up my aduncate nose 
as much as it is capable of being sniffed up, saying 
scornfully, ‘Oh, cheese it! Did you ever catch any- 
thing?’ ‘No, but in time of peace prepare for war. 
It is the only safeguard.’ 

“She did not pause to laugh at my joke about 
cheese as she has heretofore punctiliously made a 
point of doing at every one of my facetious efforts 
in accordance with the instructions laid down in her 
trusted manual entitled, ‘How to make Home Happy,’ 
wherein there is a whole chapter devoted to the import- 
ance of always giving a husband his favorite dinners, 
allowing him to smoke in every room in the house 
and laughing at his jokes, however feeble or frequently 
repeated. I see she has a leaf turned down for a mark 
at the advice about being ‘a good biddable wife,’ 
and has written on the margin, ‘I intend to obey Jack 
in all things.’ Heaven save the mark 1 Not pausing to 
laugh she entered at once on her defence with the enthu- 
siasm of a lawyer with the defendant’s rebutter. 


30 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


“ ‘Suppose I am a coward. Suppose I am afraid of 
a mouse. Has not centuries of running away evolved 
the speed of the horse and made him the most beautiful 
and useful of animals? If he had not been timid and 
ready to take to his heels at the slightest sign of danger 
real or imaginary he never could have lived through 
the survival of the fittest, for he has no weapons for 
attack or defence except his heels and they are badly 
placed where they would avail nothing against the 
lowered horns of a bull in his chest or the sharp claws of 
a tiger on his back.’ 

“You should hear Livy when she waxes eloquent 
and discourses on the mouse question.” 

So far Jack. I listened, for I was curious to hear 
what he would say about me when he did not know I 
heard him. Dear boy, not a word about his own 
sufferings in the mouse war. I wondered at his know- 
ing any law terms, such as rebutter, but I remember 
now he told me after he graduated at college his 
father insisted on his reading law, so that if he lost 
or spent all his money he would have a profession to 
fall back upon. I recollect his saying, “I guess I 
shan’t die of what I know about law.” He stuck to 
his uncle’s office about six months, but I believe was 
not called to the bar, as they say in England; at 
least, I never heard of Chief Justice Holmes of the 
United States Supreme Court calling him, and he 
would be likely to do it if anyone, as he is well ac- 
quainted with Father St. Albans. Dear me! What a 
mouthful that name is, to be sure. I can never call 
him Popper, for if I did he would call me “blessed 
imp” or some other abusive pet name. I told Jack 
I could not understand his father. He laughed and 
said, “Neither can I, nor anybody else, but he is a 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


31 


courageous old party and though he never reads any- 
thing but the tape, he gets what he goes after. He 
can hold his own, and then some. He always has a 
corner in secrets as if the tape was his bosom friend 
and told him when stocks and shares are going to 
pass their dividends, just how the market stands, 
what is doing on the street at any given moment and 
when 108 is bid and 109 asked for preferred. He 
can always fleece the lambs and squeeze the shorts. 
He says that is ‘legitimate,’ but it does not appeal 
to me, and I am going to keep out of it. Tom is a 
born stock-broker and has taken a few flyers already.” 

I am glad Jack has made that pious resolution, 
but I don’t like to have him call me a rebutter. I 
haven’t butted in anywhere, although I do think the 
St. Albans family rather look down on us because we 
don’t trace grandfathers and grandmothers back two 
hundred and fifty years to a king and an orange girl. 
That is too high and too low for us; we keep the 
juste milieu; besides, I have been told the patronymic 
does not prove descent from Nell Gwyn, promoted for 
her pretty face to be Duchess of St. Albans, merely 
that Jack’s family originated at the place of that name, 
where later Mr. Jarndyce lived in his Bleak House and 
found the East Wind very objectionable. 

Well, I must not be cross about my husband’s 
people. They have been very nice to me, and my 
poor boy has had some grievances of his own this 
“treacle-moon” trip. Notably when he had an invita- 
tion to take a seat in an aeroplane and his alarming 
wife after severe mental conflict could not and would 
not consent to his accepting it, though he explained 
it would only be a flying visit to the clouds. Did not 
Mother Goose have this very event in mind almost 


32 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


two hundred years ago when she wrote, ‘‘Jack fell 
down and broke his crown?” but she was way off when 
she added, “And Jill came tumbling after,” for noth- 
ing will ever induce this Jill to become an aviatress 
or aviatrix or whatever may be the feminine of aviator. 
Why not say air-man and air-woman, or perchance 
airy woman would sound more natural? I have been 
called by that name myself ere now. Jack declares 
the reason I would not let him go was because I did 
not want him to look down on me. Was I not warned 
to keep my distance from airships by that ter-rif-ic 
nightmare a short time ago? I dreamed my dear boy 
went up in his airship. They carried a full cargo of 
mice loaded to the gunwale. When they were about 
fifty miles high they decided to throw over some of 
the ballast. With that end in view they opened the 
mouse cage and before I could have said Jack Robinson 
all those vile, venomous vermin descended in swarms. 
I ran hither and thither to avoid them, but it was of 
no use. Just as I was going to be crushed to death 
by billions and trillions of the noxious creatures setthng 
on my head, I woke with a most awful scream. It 
was a mercy I waked before I died, but we always 
do in these frightful dreams. I never heard of any- 
thing bad really happening in a nightmare; we rouse 
before the crisis reaches us. 

Jack suggested that I had been reading over the 
Pied Piper in the evening, but I had not, only think- 
ing about a pet squirrel I had when I was a little girl. 
I loved it dearly, but when my reprehensible brother 
cut off its plumy tail it looked so much like a rat that 
I was deceived and ran away screaming, and when 
poor shorn Bunny jumped on my shoulder I fainted 
dead away. 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


33 


It was one of Jack’s favorite schemes to take me 
with him on a visit to his Alma Mater and there live 
over again in imagination those happy days of fun 
and frolic. On our way to the college I shared his 
eager anticipations listening to the “Twice Told Tales” 
of his exploits, particularly ringing the bell for chapel 
at two o’clock in the morning while returning from a 
riotous wine supper, thereby filling the chapel with 
a concourse of half-asleep, half-dressed men. His 
companions were caught red-handed, but he had the 
presence of mind to file in to prayers yawning with 
the newly awakened ones, his tousled hair, unbuttoned 
vest, hanging coat sleeves and casual air of nonchalance 
defying suspicion. 

When we arrived on the campus he was in high 
glee, talking of the envy which would fill the souls of 
the collegians when his wife should burst on their 
startled vision. Natheless he was doomed to fresh 
disappointment. The few men whom he recognized 
he had left freshmen and found seniors. They re- 
garded him as a patriarch in the land, treating him 
very deferentially, which was not his desire, especially 
as they withstood the shock of my beauty without the 
quiver of an eyelash, each one doubtless being rendered 
beauty-proof by a divinity of his own. 

Then poor Jack turned to the professors. They 
were still there not much older nor grayer nor worse 
for the wear and tear of several thousand freshmen, 
sophomores, juniors and seniors who had passed 
through their hands since Jack’s time. 

Only two remembered him at all. One clapped 
him on the back and inquired if he was as certain as 
he used to be that 7 times 9 are 54? The other said, 
“Yes, I recollect. You were concerned in changing 


34 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


the chapel Bibles between colleges and would have 
been expelled only your father is a multi-millionaire 
and on the Board.” 

A newly appointed professor seeing how chap- 
fallen Jack looked over his not too cordial reception, 
took pity on him and invited us to his house to partake 
of five o’clock tea. We spent a pleasant hour there, 
but the only real bit of comfort Jack got out of his 
visit was from the tribute of the janitor, which struck 
me as able. He said, “I always jolly well knew that 
such a prime judge of horse-flesh would be a good 
judge of calico when the right time came.” So he hit 
his bird on both wings. Jack spun a gold eagle in the 
air and the man who wasn’t born yesterday captured 
it with no diminution of his old-time skill in coin 
catching. 

When I get too intolerably vain in consequence 
of so much flattery I contemplate my visage in the 
bowl of my soup spoon at dinner. It is an excellent 
antidote, very; first concave, then convex. 

My crestfallen partner’s latest disappointment 
came when his Niagara kodak views failed to develop 
in the perfection which should have characterized 
them considering he made use of the cataract chiefly 
as an appropriate background to enhance my portrait, 
never for a moment imagining that Niagara would be 
so inconsiderate as to dwarf me to about the size of a 
New Jersey mosquito. This disillusion coming on the 
top of the episode at the breakfast table that morning, 
nearly superinduced Americanitis or so-called nervous 
prostration, but the landlord brought him through 
by prescribing a Gin Elevated Spheroid. 

I laugh every time I think of that breakfast with 
the fledgling, which resembled the Bon Ami Soap 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


35 


chicken, inasmuch as “it had never scratched yet.” 
Jack had taken up his knife and exhibited an accom- 
plishment of which he is inordinately vain, striking 
off the small end of his egg at one light blow without 
removing it from the cup. The head waiter was 
standing behind his chair an interested spectator of 
the feat. I was looking in surprise at the great man 
who had never before deigned to leave his post at the 
door of the hall, when suddenly a look of horror over- 
spread his Milesian features. Lightning is slow 
compared to the swoop which swept that egg-cup 
from the table, but haste and speed proved fatal. 
The horror-stricken man slipped on the polished 
floor, strove to retrieve himself, lost his balance and 
in his struggles launched the immature bird, imprisoned 
in its maternal envelope, the length of the dining-room 
until it fell and the shell broke on the prima donna’s 
plate, eliciting a scream which rose in a crescendo 
higher than she had ever achieved on the operatic 
stage, and she nearly fainted in good earnest, no feint 
this time. I had thought there could be nothing 
worse than a live mouse, but perhaps a dead, half- 
fledged, parboiled chicken may surpass it if suddenly 
deposited on one’s plate from out the circumambient 
air. But my sympathy is for the setting (or perhaps 
I ought to say the sitting) hen, who was fraudulently 
prevented from doing her whole duty as a parent. 

The prima donna was inclined to blame “the 
innocent holder,” but he politely assured her that it 
would be a life-long pang to him that owing to the 
limitation of vision he had been unable to see through 
the opaque shell and thus avoid the regrettable dis- 
turbance of her nervous system. Whereupon the 
actress laughed and walked away. 


36 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


Jacky says we need not caution him not to count 
his chickens before they are hatched; he doesn't 
want to. 

At another hotel an ancient dame, who had watched 
Jack’s prowess admiringly for several days, was 
tempted of the Evil One to imitate his dexterity, 
so taking up her soft-boiled egg she struck it broad- 
side on, a smart blow with the flat of her knife. The 
result was a plentiful bespattering of tablecloth, 
hands, face and clothes. Jack left his untasted break- 
fast muttering, “Great Caesar! I suppose I am to 
blame for this too!” 

Why do such dire consequences follow constantly 
in our wake? I remained and helped to repair 
damages with the aid of half a dozen able-bodied 
waiters, water and towels ad libitum. I should never 
have believed so much material could have been 
compressed in so small a compass. It made the old 
adage clear to me: “As full as an egg is of meat.” 
Only suppose it had been an ostrich egg! I did not 
enjoy staying and helping to clear up the eggy mess, 
but if I had shirked and deserted the poor thing in 
her hapless plight I should have had a poor opinion 
of myself ever afterwards. 

My better half gave no more matinal exhibitions, 
but fed on omelets until he was safe in the arms of his 
own family who are not stuck on copying his every 
motion. He said to me, “That is one thing I like 
about you; you don’t go around imitating people.” 
“No,” was my meek reply; “like you I am busy 
setting the pace for others to imitate.” Truly it was 
no light thing to be a leader of ton in those rural 
districts where we visited some agricultural cousins; 
however, I consider I fulfilled my mission with con- 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


37 


siderable eclat. When the girls, clustering around 
me as closely as a swarm of bees around their queen, 
asked with breathless interest in antiphonal chorus, 
“Oh, Mrs. St. Albans, how do they make sleeves 
now?’’ I kept my equipoise and just told them, “Girls, 
you can wear your own God-given sleeves; moreover, 
the browner they are tanned the tonier you are, thereby 
proving that you have been out of town all summer.” 
“Yes,” they groaned, “and all winter too.” 

I find I am not the only woman who renders her- 
self and those around her uncomfortable by her 
imaginary fears and terrors. We became acquainted 
during our matrimonial jaunt with an elderly lady, 
somewhat inclined to understate her family Bible 
age, a sort of “abandoned derelict” who appealed to 
us for sympathy and protection. It has been rather 
frequently mentioned that Sidney Smith once said 
it was so insufferably hot he wished he could take off 
his flesh and sit in his bones. In like manner our self- 
elected, unattached, traveling companion was so 
abnormally sensitive she seemed to take off her flesh 
and sit in her nerves. She had always lived in the 
country and had no notion of electricity except in 
the form of lightning, of which she had an overpower- 
ing dread. The broomstick train was a new experience 
to her, as awesome as my mice to me. On taking 
her seat for the first time she whispered she felt as if 
about to be electrocuted, and looked around for 
corpses. She was alarmed by the telegraph wires 
overhead, believing they would surely attract lightning 
even out of a cloudless sky. The electric street lights 
were things to shun. When they grew dim and then 
flared up she would clutch my arm and cry, “Now! 
now they are going to explode!” She had a holy 


38 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


horror of telephones, for, as she put it, “Besides the 
danger, it was so dreadful to take everybody’s breaths, 
they must be a great means of disseminating disease.” 
As for riding full tilt in an electric motor, it was 
anathema. When she first heard the clang of the 
motor horn and a limousine charged on her at a street 
crossing it straightway became a Juggernaut car, 
for she prostrated herself before it and it was only 
due to Jack’s muscular arm that she did not become 
a victim to “the Satanic brkss god Moloch in the 
pleasant valley of Hinnom or Tophet, meaning the 
place of drums, so-called in allusion to the drums and 
timbrels sounded to drown the cries of children 
sacrificed to the idol.” 

Jack was so good natured we actually went a 
hundred miles out of our way to see this waif and 
stray from a former age to her journey’s end. When 
we left her she was happy in being a mile from a 
telegraph pole, in a house without telephones, electric 
lights or bells, not even a wireless ship in the offing. 
We pitied her, but after we had deposited her in 
safety Jack threw back his head in the carriage and 
laughed loud and long; then he repeated a verse which 
seemed applicable: 

“Ancient maiden lady 
Anxiously remarks 
That there must be peril 
’Mong so many sparks. 

Roguish looking fellow, 

Turning to the stranger, 

Says it’s his opinion 
She is out of danger.” 

“Oh, wasn’t it just ripping? The rippingest 
farce ever; a record breaker; nothing to beat it from 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 39 

Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon. The mouse 
circus isn’t a patch on it.” 

While we were experiencing our experiences I had 
taken stock of myself. When Jack was calm this 
brief dialogue ensued: 

Olivia: Jack, I am going to try to cure myself of my 
mousephobia. 

Jack: Good little girl! Do if you can. Don’t if 
you can’t. 

Olivia: Don’t you think Fluffy will be as good as a 
mouse trap? 

Jack: Yes, much better; no odor of Limburger. 
Olivia: Do you suppose I could ever be good? 

Jack: You are an angel now. 

Olivia: There are no women angels in Paradise Lost. 
Jack: There is one angel woman in Paradise Found. 

Nothing will make my husband see me as I am. 
I cannot take all this praise under false pretences. 
Behold me continually apologizing to myself for my- 
self, miserable impostor that I am. I hope by the 
time that he gets his nine-days-eyes open I shall have 
improved so much he will never discover his mistake. 

I fear our ill-luck is spreading to our families. 
Monomer has had her hair bleached today, but her 
face is blanched instead of her hair, for instead of the 
aristocratic snowy whiteness she had prefigured to 
herself her abundant tresses are transformed to a 
brilliant green. It is truly frightful. Her aspect as 
she said, “Children, don’t speak to me,” almost turned 
me to stone, as if she were indeed the veritable Gorgon 
she so closely resembles, her stray wisps of hair seem- 
ing to squirm for all the world like Medusa’s snakes. 


40 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


She has locked herself in her room and telephoned 
for the family physician. I don’t know what he can 
do. I should have consulted the college chemist myself. 
When Popper knocked at her door she said, “George, 
go away; if you should see me you would laugh, then 
I should die.” Poor Mommer! She has lost her 
grip on her boasted common sense, but I suppose 
we would all feel the same in her predicament. I 
wish she would let me go to her and comfort her. 
I hope the doctor will come soon; he will cheer her up. 
We shall surely find a way out of this scrape as we have 
in so many cases hitherto. When things are at the 
worst they must take a turn for the better. I will 
hold this thought firm, as the Christian Scientists 
say, and I shall write to the chemist right now on my 
own responsibility. I am going to take Fluffy to 
Mommer’s door; he will scratch on it and she will 
let him in. The dear little loving pet will have a sooth- 
ing influence. It will take more than Medusa to 
scare him. 

Besides Mommer’s calamity the contagion of our 
misfortunes appears to have reached my husband’s 
family. I wonder would it do any good as a preven- 
tive or sort of mascot if I carried a rabbit foot. If 
I did, I should not dare to let my Mentor know it; 
he would say it was sillier than knocking on wood. 

The first I heard was from Tom, who, primed with 
the news and aching to create a sensation, popped his 
cherubic countenance in at the door and cried with 
his simultaneous suddenness all over him, “Miss 
St. Albans has had her nose put out of joint.” Now, 
whether that is cold fact or Tom’s metaphorical way 
of talking, it savors of our disasters. 

Tom and Jack do not know about Mommer’s 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


41 


hair, and it is not best they should. Tom would 
shriek, “Hello, Ma! Do you think it is the seventeenth 
of March and be you wearin’ o’ the green to jolly 
St. Patrick?” and Jack would inquire if she has lost 
her head like poor Vesuvius and laugh his loudest, 
though I am trying to keep the house in solemn, 
consolatory, sympathetic silence. 

But the end is not yet. It cannot be said my 
brother is lazy and I am certain of his return before 
the incident is closed. Behold, there he is again at 
the window. I have implored him to try to tell the 
truth. He declares there is an understudy of the 
Biblical Jacob in the city who has been engineering 
a Leah and Rachel coup, engaging himself to Rachel 
in an unauthorized fashion. Tom asserts that their 
father ought to imitate Laban and proceed to knock 
out Jacob’s under-pinning by saying, “No you don’t; 
the youngest daughter cannot be married before the 
eldest. I won’t have it.” It surprises me, this Tom, 
for I did not know that so much residuum of his 
Sunday-school lessons remained in his brain. “Pooh!” 
says Tom, “I remember the whole story. Made her 
beau work for him seven years, rewarded him with 
the wrong sister at the end of the job, then Jacob 
took on another seven years’ contract for the right 
one. Count me out. I’m no Jacob.” It is not to 
be denied that Thomas has the sense of values. 

Of course, this Scriptural comparison is nonsense, 
though I must confess that I myself should not have 
liked the obloquy of having a younger sister married 
before me. It was lucky Tom intervened between 
us and kept us four years apart or she might have 
come in ahead at the winning-post, for she is a preco- 
cious chit (though she didn’t die early, or hasn’t yet). 


42 


A HONEYMOON SOLILOQUY 


with a marked tendency towards matrimony. Of 
one thing I am sure, she will not need to attend the 
University course of lectures “For the Advancement 
of Husbandry.” She is ready for college a year 
younger than I was, and has passed her preliminaries 
without conditions, which is more than I did. To 
give her her due, she is a bright girl and we love each 
other, though we do not always manifest it and some- 
times I wish her in Ballyhack. 

Hark! There is Jack calling, “Olivia, come and 
see what has happened now!” 

That calloused trifler Tom is shouting in his best 
megaphone voice his favorite bit of Yiddish slang, 
“ Ish ga bibble! Ish ga bibble!” 

Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Are we living in the land of 
Uz in the days of Job? That patriarch was much 
tried, but then he was easily tried. If that clumsy 
express man has smashed my Chinese china dinner 
set to smithereens I shall give up in despair. Oh, 
worse! a hundred times worse. Tragedy enfolds me, 
wraps me round. My heart has skipped a beat. What 
shall, what can we do ? 


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